We ate al fresco, as true buccaneers of the main, and grew better

and better acquainted. It occurred to me that mayhap the nautical

education of my associates was, after all, somewhat superficial, so I

set about mending it by explaining something of the rigging of the

ship; and I gave them, by means of the Sea Rover's bowline, some

lessons in sailorman splices and knots. The bow-line-in-a-bight, the

sheet-bend, the clinch-knot, the jam-knot, the fisherman's water-knot,

the stevedore's slip-knot, the dock-hand's round-turns and

half-hitches for cable makefast, the magnus-hitch, the fool's-knot,

the cat's-cradle, the sheep-shank, the dog-shank, and many others--all

of which I had learned in books and in practise--I did for them over

and over again; just as I could have done for them a half-dozen

different ways of throwing the diamond-hitch in a pack-train, or the

stirrup-hitch in a cow camp, or many other of the devices of men who

live in the open; for beginning late in life in these things, I had

studied them hard and faithfully.

I could see--and I noted it with much gratification--that I was rising

in the estimation of my pirates. It pleased me not at all to show that

I knew more than they of these things, for I was older and my mind was

long my trained servant; but I had monstrous delight in seeing myself

accepted as one fit to associate with them. Once or twice, I saw the

two draw apart in some debate which I knew had to do with me. "Well,

now," Lafitte would begin; and L'Olonnois would demur. "No, I don't

just like that one," he would say. By nightfall--and I presume I do

not need to recall all the incidents of our afternoon, or of our

pitching camp by the riverside an hour before sundown--I learned what

was the subject of their argument. I had been admitted to the pirates'

band, but the question was over my name.

We sat by our fireside, before our little tent, after a pleasant meal

which I know was well cooked because I cooked it myself--trout, a

young squirrel, and toast, and real coffee--and Partial was close at

my knee, having obviously adopted me. We were fifteen or twenty miles

from my house, nearly twice that from their homes, but the world,

itself, seemed very remote from us. We reveled in a new luxurious

world of rare deeds, rare dreams all our own. I was conjuring up some

new argument to put before Helena should I ever see her again--as of

course I never should--when Lafitte rolled over on the grass and

looked up at us.

"We was just saying," he remarked, "that you didn't have no name."

"That is true. I have not told you my name, nor have you asked it. Had

you been impolite, you might have learned it by prying about my

place." I spoke gravely and with approval.




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